Why your contract management security falls short and how to fix it?

Contract management security is about protecting all the sensitive information, obligations, and processes involved in handling contracts—including who agreed to what, when, and under what conditions. It covers things like:

• Keeping contracts confidential (only the right people should see them),
• Making sure contracts aren't tampered with, so no unauthorized access and changes happen,
• Tracking deadlines, obligations, and compliance securely,
• Protecting against fraud, leaks, or even accidental mistakes.

Now, there are a few big reasons why there may be security risks in contract management. To scratch the surface, some of the reasons are:

1. Poor access controls: if too many people can see or edit contracts, or if permissions aren't clear, it becomes easy for someone to mess up or steal information.
2. Outdated systems: if contracts are managed with old software, spreadsheets, or even paper, it's harder to track changes, secure documents, or detect tampering.
3. Human error: people might email a contract to the wrong person, lose a file, forget to encrypt something, or fail to notice a data breach. We’re all human.
4. Cyberattacks: hackers love to go after contracts because they contain valuable business info. If you have a weak security system, you may become a target to one.
5. Third-party risks: if you share contracts with vendors, partners, or clients, you rely on their security too. If their system gets hacked, your contracts might leak.
6. Compliance failures: laws like GDPR or HIPAA demand that sensitive data (including contracts) is handled securely. If you don't comply, you could be fined or lose your partner's trust.

In this article, we’ll help you find the root cause of your contract management security issues and provide some of the best practices for tightening your security levels.

Step one: find the root cause of contract security risks

Before being able to fix or take your contract management security to the next level, though, you have to identify where exactly it suffers.

The real threat may not be just hackers or malicious “businesses” asking for ransom, most of the time it’s simply:

• Broken processes,
• Siloed systems,
• Human shortcuts,
• And a complete lack of visibility.

Until those are addressed, everything else is just window dressing.

So, we’ll go through some of the most common poor contract management habits that cause issues within security to help you find any leaks in your processes. 

Problem #1: contracts are signed and forgotten

Too many organizations still treat contracts like dead paper—a document that gets signed and stuffed in a digital or physical drawer. But modern contracts aren’t just agreements; they’re data, often sensitive at that.

They contain personal information, renewal terms, SLAs, obligations, triggers, penalties—all of which need to be tracked, measured, acted on, and protected.

When contracts are frozen in PDF form with no connection to workflows or worse, printed and stuck in a physical archive, you lose the possibility to create automated actions, like:

• Renewal alerts, which prevents losing revenue,
• SLA enforcement, which helps avoid risk exposure,
• Milestone tracking, preventing operational failures.

Problem #2: teams not following official routes

Legal thinks they control contract workflows. But in reality, they often don’t. At least not when other teams are not following the official routes to approve and sign contracts, or worse, there’s even no official workflow to follow.

Sales, procurement, marketing—every team has their own flavor of “quick agreement,” half of which are sent through email, LinkedIn, or Slack without ever touching official systems.

This is how you end up with:

• Unapproved NDAs signed in a rush,
• Vendor contracts bypassing proper reviews,
• Rogue redlines accepted without legal input.

This is the fastest path to regulatory fines, breach of terms, and broken trust. If you don't centralize your contract process, you’ve got no perimeter to defend.

Problem #3: contract data scattered across 10 spreadsheets

Here’s a dirty secret in most orgs: the “contract database” isn’t a contract management software or an archive in an e-signature software, it’s a shared Excel doc with tabs like “Renewals 2025,” “High-risk clauses,” and “Who owns what.”

How can that cause security issues, though?

For one, storing contracts in a shared Excel doc can cause issues with access control if we don’t set up the document’s access properly every single time.

For two, there’s no collective source of truth. Every team has their own version of the database, every contract or contract type is stored in a different document, and finding the specific one can be extremely difficult. For contracts to remain secure and compliant, they have to be constantly monitored, and scattered documents and clauses certainly don’t help.

For three, scattered documents also cause issues with proper audit trails. It’ll be pretty difficult to prove who edited what at which time if we can’t even find the document in the first place.

Problem #4: access control is a joke

Think your contracts are safe because they’re “inside the system”? Think again.

Common issues with access control are:

• Former employees still having access to contract folders,
• Interns being able to view the same master service agreements as executives,
• Contractors downloading signed deals without having to log in or confirm their identity.

Access control isn’t just about who should see a contract, it’s about who shouldn’t, and what happens when they do anyway.

“Just use a secure repository” is not enough

You’ve heard it a thousand times:

“Just store contracts in a secure system and enforce role-based access.”

Well, that’s the ‘drink water and sleep 8 hours’ of contract security advice. Technically correct, but useless on its own. Because here’s what actually happens in the wild:

• Legal downloads the contract to mark it up in Microsoft Word,
• Finance pulls the renewal clause into a spreadsheet to build their forecast,
• Sales uploads a redlined version to a shared Google Drive folder so the client can “quickly take a look”,
• Someone forgets to delete their local copy,
• Someone else forwards that local copy to their Gmail.

And now your “secure repository” has just turned into a suggestion, not a safeguard.

Step two: apply the best practices to tighten contract security

Knowing where your contract management security performs poorly, you can go into actually trying to fix it.

You can start with a mindset change.

System-level protections

Contracts need the same level of infrastructure security as your customer databases or financial systems.

So instead of thinking of a secure folder for your contracts, start thinking of creating a whole secure system architecture.

A. Encrypt everything

Encrypting data at rest is table stakes. But if you're not also encrypting data in transit, search queries, and even metadata, you’re leaving traces all over the place. Anyone who can see your usage logs can figure out what contracts are being searched for most—and why.

Tip: choose a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system that has the following contract management security features:

• Encrypts with modern standards (Advanced Encryption Standard-256+),
• Encrypts data in transit, not just data at rest,
• Offers field-level encryption, not just bulk storage,
• Doesn’t leak metadata (e.g., contract names, client names) into analytics dashboards visible to too many users.

B. Role-based access ≠ security

Role-based access control (RBAC) is often thrown around like a cure-all. But unless your roles are tightly scoped, reviewed regularly, and enforced at the object level (not just folder level), it’s just an illusion of control.

Let’s say your sales director has “edit access”—to what exactly? All contracts? Past, present, and future? Even for deals they weren’t involved in? That’s a problem.

Here’s what good access permission looks like:

• Granular permissions (edit/view/download/sign) established per user, per contract,
• Access expiration dates, don’t give out the keys forever,
• Automatic revocation of access when a user changes roles or leaves the org.

C. Audit trails aren’t optional

If your platform can’t show who viewed, edited, downloaded, exported, or signed a contract, you’re flying blind.

Imagine this: a VP leaked a vendor contract to a competitor before quitting. No one noticed for two months because there was no audit trail. Company lost the deal and almost got sued.

What you need are:

• Immutable logs,
• Timestamps for every interaction,
• Context: “John Smith downloaded ‘Client_MSA_v3_redlined.pdf’ from IP 192.168.1.8 on March 3, 2025 at 2:14 a.m.”

D. Integrate with your security stack

Contract systems shouldn’t live in a silo. If a contractor downloads 100 contracts at once, your SIEM (Security Information & Event Management) should know, prompting notifications of security incidents.

The best Contract Management Systems plug into:

• SSO (Single Sign On) & MFA (two-factor authentication),
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools,
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems.

Operational controls

Besides system-level protection, there are also many operational control patterns you can implement to help improve your contract security.

A. Lock downloads unless specified conditions are met

Don’t allow contracts to be downloaded unless specific milestones are hit.

For example sales can view a proposal draft, but they can’t download or send it externally until Legal has approved it and the pricing has been validated.

Example triggers could be requiring the document status to be “final” or “approved for signature.” before being able to download it.

B. Red-flag versions edited outside the system

The moment someone downloads a Word file, makes edits offline, and re-uploads it, you’ve got a zombie contract—looks alive, but it’s totally disconnected from your version control and audit trail.

For better contract data security, you need red flag detection:

• Catch files that were re-imported but weren’t edited in-platform,
• Automatically quarantine or flag them for review,
• Show visual diffs and alert legal when key clauses (IP, liability, termination) were changed externally.

Contracts are obviously not an entirely internal affair, they’re often signed with external partners, vendors, collaborators—which requires sharing contracts outside of the org.

If you’re sharing your contracts with links, make sure to set link expiration rules. 

For example:

• Every shared contract link expires in 48 hours or after 3 external opens.
• If the document is edited, the link auto-revokes and must be reauthorized.

That kills stale, vulnerable versions before they can cause damage.

Or use an e-signature software, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

Behavioral monitoring

Security isn’t just about who can do something—it’s about who actually does it, when, how often, and whether that behavior makes any sense.

This is where most contract security setups fail: they stop at permissions and ignore behavioral signals. But guess what? Breaches don’t happen when a user gets access. They happen when the wrong user does the wrong thing at the wrong time and no one’s watching.

A. Use anomaly detection, not just logs

Besides audit trails we mentioned earlier that track who accessed what and when, it’s best to also set behavioral baselines and smart alerts when patterns go off-script. This one is especially crucial for robust contract management, including managing enterprise contracts.

Behavioral triggers to watch:

• An intern accessing 30 contracts in one hour,
• A former employee’s session is still active two weeks later,
• A procurement analyst downloading vendor NDAs for regions they don’t manage,
• Repeated failed login attempts from an offshore IP.

Digital signing & storing

Most companies use e-signatures for speed. Smart ones use them for security.

A. Add identity verification to e-signature workflows

[ilustracja pokazująca identity verification methods w Autenti?]

If you wouldn’t let someone log into your company’s systems without MFA, why would you let them sign a six-figure agreement without it?

Better signature flows enforce:

• SSO-based signing for internal users (you know who they are),
• SMS or email verification for external signers,
• ID verification for high-risk contracts (think: passport, gov ID, or even video conference verification).

B. Use tamper-proof, time-stamped audit trails for signatures

Every signature should leave behind a clear, locked, tamper-proof audit trail that shows:

• Who signed the contract,
• What version they signed,
• When they signed,
• What IP/device/location they signed from.

This isn’t just good hygiene—it’s critical when things go sideways. If a dispute hits, and your audit trail is “just an email thread,” good luck defending it in court.

C. Use secure platforms, like Autenti

Signatures aren’t the end of the contract, they’re the beginning of security threats. So stop treating them like rubber stamps. Make them smart. Make them secure with what’s utmost secure—electronic signatures provided by established platforms, like Autenti.

Autenti is a Trust Service Provider for e-signature services and a fully secure e-signature platform. It adheres to the highest information security standards, including ISO/IEC 27001:2017 certification, ensuring robust data protection and privacy.

D. Follow others’ success

Want a real-life example of secure contracts handled digitally?

Bank Millennium needed a faster, more secure way to handle HR documents, which we all know contain a lot of sensitive and personal information to protect. 

By implementing the Autenti platform, they enabled employees and directors to sign contracts digitally and instantly, without the need for in-person meetings or paperwork—but what’s most important, it was all done securely.

“Processing and signing take place in a strictly defined manner. Only authorised individuals have access to the documents. During the signing and delivery process, no one can alter the content, ensuring that the signed document is always identical to the original. Validation certification is provided through a detailed PDF report issued by Autenti, containing information on the verification of signatures and electronic seals, which can be downloaded after the process concludes,” as Monika Ruraż-Lipińska, Head of HR Team at Bank Millenium commented on the security of e-signing with Autenti.

As a result, document turnaround times dropped to just minutes, processes became more secure, and the bank saved money while supporting its sustainability goals.

Take your contract management security to the next level, with Autenti. Try free for 14 days, no credit card required.

Bonus: 15-point secure contract management audit checklist

• Is there a designated owner to manage contract security?
• Are legal, IT, and other stakeholders involved in the process from the start?
• When it comes to contract storage: are contracts stored in a secure, centralized contract repository?
• Is access to contracts role-based and granular, established per person per contract?
• Are approval workflows automated, and is there version control?
• Are audit trails enabled for all actions on contracts (view, edit, download)?
• Is there an automated process for contract renewals and expirations?
• Does your system prevent external sharing of contracts unless approved?
• Are contracts encrypted both at rest and in transit?
• Do you use identity verification (SSO, MFA) for internal and external signers?
• Is every signed document timestamped, and is the signer’s identity verified?
• Do you have DLP policies in place to prevent sensitive clauses from being shared externally?
• Are abnormal access patterns (e.g., off-hours access, high-frequency downloads) detected and flagged?
• Does your system integrate with your SIEM/SOC to provide broader security visibility?
• Do you regularly test your contract security policies through red team exercises or vulnerability assessments?